Head of banned German mosque received orders from Iranian official, report says
Instructions came in hundreds of text messages on WhatsApp, including about how to frame October 7, according to Der Spiegel report, before institution was shuttered last month
The head of a mosque in Hamburg received instructions from an Iranian official in hundreds of text messages, before German authorities closed down his institution last month, the Der Spiegel news site reported.
Mehdi Mostafavi, an Iranian official, had sent Mohammad Hadi Mofatteh, head of the IZH Islamic Center in Hamburg, more than 650 messages via WhatsApp between late 2021 and late 2023, De Spiegel reported Thursday.
The Der Spiegel report follows Germany’s ban on the Islamic Centre Hamburg (IZH) and its subsidiary organizations for pursuing radical Islamist goals.
IZH, which is a cultural center that features a popular mosque known as the Blue Mosque, had acted as a “direct representative of Iran’s Shi’ite Muslim Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and sought to bring about an Islamic revolution in Germany to impose theocratic rule,” the interior ministry said, in a statement about the decision last month.
Following Hamas’s October 7 massacre in southern Israel, Mostavi told Mofatteh to frame the brutal onslaught as a courageous operation and natural response to Israel’s alleged offenses against Palestinians.
“The Islamic Resistance had no other means to stop Israel’s crimes… Thanks to the courage of Palestinian youth, the Zionist regime will never be the same,” a message cited by Der Spiegel read.
In addition to spreading Tehran’s narratives and ideology, the report also said that German police found documents suggesting the Islamic center acted as a funding pipeline to proxy militias, citing financial endorsements for operations in Yemen with Khamenei’s personal seal.
A senior Hezbollah cleric who oversees the terror group’s foreign relations also visited multiple times, thanking the center for “financial, spiritual and advisory support,” according to the report.
Germany considers Hezbollah a terrorist organization, and in 2020 banned the group from carrying out activities on its soil.
Iran’s foreign ministry said it had summoned the German ambassador in Tehran on Wednesday in protest of the ban.
“Unfortunately, what happened in Germany is an example of Islamophobia and is in opposition to the teachings of the Abrahamic faiths,” it said on X, referring to Islam, Christianity, and Judaism. The ministry said the ban violated freedom of expression and promoted violence and extremism.
The ban on IZH and the subsequent Der Spiegel report came as Hezbollah-led forces continue to attack Israeli communities and military posts along the Israel-Lebanon border on a near-daily basis, as they have since October 8, saying they are doing so to support Gaza during the war there.
It also came at the same time as a surge of antisemitism in Germany and around the world since the October 7 attack on Israel, which saw thousands of Hamas-led thousands of terrorists kill some 1,200 people and take 251 hostages, sparking the ongoing war.
